1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of medical imaging, and more particularly to the field of radiology.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Vascular interventional radiology includes procedures conducted under monitoring by imaging, and notably allows the treatment of arteriosclerosis.
Arteriosclerosis causes local narrowing of the diameter of a vessel and also causes obstruction of the vessel, which hinders the circulating blood flow. Angioplasty consists of deploying an inflatable balloon at the point of narrowing for the purpose of widening the diameter of the vessel. An endovascular prosthesis (or stent) can also be implanted in the vessel to keep the vessel open.
During angioplasty procedure, the surgeon inserts a guide wire into the vessel to bring a catheter carrying the inflatable balloon or stent as far as the narrowed region. The surgeon must position the stent at a precise point.
To monitor conducting of the procedure, the surgeon visualizes a radiological image of the treated region. The radiological image is an image acquired in real time, which enables the surgeon to visualize the positioning of the different instruments used in the region to be treated.
In order to be able to control the positioning of the prosthesis in the region to be treated, the surgeon must have an image available in which the stent can be visualized. Yet in the image obtained after deployment of the stent, the guide wire is superimposed over the stent. Therefore, the presence of the guide wire hampers visualization of the stent. However this guide wire must remain in place until the end of the procedure for medical reasons.
Because the stent is a thin mesh having very low contrast compared with the remainder of the image, and since the guide wire has greater contrast, the guide wire may mask some parts of the stent which are of interest to the surgeon. Therefore, for the surgeon to have access to a maximum amount of information, the guide wire needs to be deleted so that only the stent is seen in the region to be treated.
Techniques are known which allow objects in an image to be removed without impairing the visual aspect of the image. These techniques are known as inpainting. However, these techniques proceed by interpolating the image around the object to reconstruct the removed part. This technique results in a loss of information which is incompatible with diagnosis in the medical sphere.